


Be Careful Making Wishes

by scarredsodeep



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, Boners On Stage, Different Bands AU, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Forced Bonding, Humor, Lust, M/M, Mental Link, Mind Meld, Patrick is 17, Patrick is so angry, Pete is worried about the ethics of consent when there's a mindlink, So Many Boner Jokes, Touring, Unrequited, Van Days, Wishes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 20:07:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9841922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: Local Asshole Pete Wentz is on the same summerfest tour as Joe and Patrick, and he's making their lives miserable. When Patrick's unwise words cause them to beempathically bonded, he ends up with a lot more Pete Wentz than he bargained for. Can Patrick break the mindlink-slash-curse and be free of Pete once and for all? Will he even want to? Andwhydoes Pete keep getting uncontrollable boners on stage?For Bandom Bingo 2017: mindmeld.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Someone make me a Fanfic Trope bingo card so I can write Peterick fics for ALL OF THEM. I am so ready to dive into this fandom and just fucking _write it all_. You guys are the best, and this fic would not be possible without the loving and selfless beta work provided by [immoral_crow](http://archiveofourown.org/users/immoral_crow/), who I do not deserve.
> 
> UPDATE: There is now a [bingo card](http://lady-smutterella.dreamwidth.org/284.html). You can play too!
> 
> I hope you have much fun reading this as I did writing it, and please tell me *all about it* because I am fragile and vain and live for our interactions.

“…so the whole time he’s like, carefully folding the practice schedule into a fucking airplane, and when I ask him _for like the tenth time_ to get his shit off the stage so we can use it, he _throws the plane_ and it sails away and he goes, ‘The thing is, I haven’t even seen this practice schedule, so I think you’re just gonna have to wait til we’re done.’ Like, can you even believe this asshole? Honoring cooperative agreements is, like, the _cornerstone_ of civilization. Otherwise it’s cavemen killing each other with dinosaur bones—total anarchy. Why would he think that was okay? My ancestors did not crawl out of the fucking sea for this—this—flagrant disregard of practice schedules!”

Joe is, of course, complaining about Pete Wentz. This has been sort of a thing. Pete Wentz is like, this kind of notorious asshole of the Chicago hardcore scene, and his band is playing the same Summerfest circuit they are, and the conflict between Pete and Joe has been _escalating_. Joe collects insults, accrues outrage in each new city. Meanwhile everyone’s tempers are growing more ragged; the string of nights spent sleeping in cars and re-wearing dirty t-shirts is growing longer; Patrick’s patience for any kind of asshole, including his cranky best friend Joe, is growing thin indeed.

Patrick’s out of outrage. He is not surprised that a renowned dickhead is acting like a dickhead. He does not think it especially matters whether they practice now or an hour from now, when Racetraitor finishes. He is mostly just tired and annoyed and getting smellier by the day. He cannot take much more of the—the constant _brouhaha_. He is privately of the opinion that Pete and Joe should just get it over with already, and kill each other or kiss each other or otherwise reach the climax of this petty little squabble, whatever that may be.

Being a mostly okay friend, though, what Patrick says instead is, “He’s an asshole, man. I _wish_ I knew what went on in his head. I’d write a tell-all book that would sell _tens_ of copies. But I don’t. C’mon—let’s raid their bus for clean underwear while they’re busy practicing.”

And that, Patrick thinks, it that.

Until he wakes up the next morning with someone else’s voice in his head.

*

Pete is on stage, screaming-deep in his band’s set. The crowd is nodding, swaying, finishing cigarettes and knitting into a tighter unit, changed by the cohesion of sound. The dust has already been danced off the stage by the first band; the planks are perfect, taut and not yet dotted with sweat. Pete spins with his bass, teeth bared grinning, his hair whipping through the air and the air whipping through his chest, buffeting his heart up, up into his throat.

(Patrick is alone in a grubby bathroom with his hand in his pants, trying to get off while not thinking about the reason he needs to get off right now.)

Pete is curling over his bass, which hangs from its strap, and cupping a microphone in his hands, grating out a long, hoarse verse of screaming.

(Patrick’s stroking his dick, which usually makes tension bleed out of him but today is knotting his shoulders tighter and tighter with each pull.)

With _absolutely no warning,_ like being shot with an arrow of horniness directly in the groin, Pete sucks in a syllable of his scream and _pops a boner onstage_.

Pete stays hunched over his bass, keeping it positioned to hide his crotch while he desperately wills his erection to dissipate. He thinks of the least erotic things he can conjure: the dumpster behind the Korean restaurant he lives above on a hot day; his bandmate’s back hairs clogging the shower drain; his grandma getting it on. The boner is utterly undaunted. It feels—so _good_.  A sound comes out of Pete’s throat that has nothing to do with the song, and his hands fumble on the neck of his bass as his hips shift without his permission. His girl jeans will conceal nothing if he stands up straight and he cares less and less. God, it feels like—like—

(Patrick’s panting, head tilted towards the ceiling, eyes scrunched shut, one hand tweaking his own nipple while the other picks up speed on his cock. He’s close, close. He’s frustrated and impossibly horny. This has _nothing to do_ with Pete Wentz. God, god. His heartbeat chokes him. His blood throbs so loud in his ears he goes temporarily deaf. His hand strokes and strokes and—)

Holy shit. _Holy shit_. Pete’s—he’s—yes. Yes, _yes_. Pete’s coming. In his pants. On stage.

(Patrick comes, gasping with relief. His body shudders like it’s going to come apart with the aftershocks. He cleans up, carefully avoiding eye contact with himself in the mirror. Even at gunpoint he would not admit whose face he saw while he let go.)

Pete finishes the set crabbed over his bass, his cheeks burning with _what the fuck_ -barrassment, the cool wet spot on his jeans sticky and incriminating and uncomfortable. When the set ends he makes a beeline for the bathroom, barely managing to unplug his bass before he runs offstage with it. Pete wishes he’d had room in his luggage for more than two pairs of pants, wishes the second pair hadn’t already been sacrificed to the cause of rappelling out a third-story hotel room window for some dumb video.

“What the fuck is happening to me?” Pete asks his reflection, standing half-naked at a sink, scrubbing his jeans and knowing they’re going back on wet when he’s finished. “Is this Puberty II: The Resurgence?”

Pete is alone with no one to laugh at his jokes, with no one to provide him an answer. He’s angry and embarrassed and a little freaked out about how thoroughly he just lost control.

(Patrick is alone with thoughts of Pete Wentz. He hoped they’d get rubbed out, pun intended. If anything, they’re only getting stronger. He keeps getting flashes of Pete’s wide, indolent eyes, a sense of worry and creeping shame that Patrick assumes is his own Pete-related guilt. Two days ago he’d never spared more than passing irritation for the bassist of Racetraitor; he was just one of twenty or so guys they were touring with, one with whom Joe had an especial and sometimes entertaining feud. Now the thoughts of Pete are coming thicker, faster, stronger. Patrick is horrified at his own internal word choice and the images stirred up in answer. He needs to get fucking Pete Wentz out of his head. In every goddamn sense of the sentiment.)

*

Patrick is lying awake in his narrow, shitty bed. Every time he gets close, approaches the edge of sleep with sideways coyness, careful not to startle it—every time, he’s pulled back to the surface by this _song_. This scrap of twisting melody that keeps playing in his head.

It’s not quite right, the melody. He thinks that’s maybe why it’s niggling at him and won’t let go: it needs him to fix it. So he gets up and writes it down.

He tries, anyway. It’s like the song is fighting him: he keeps trying to force it into a shape that makes sense to him, that fits his Idea of How Music Should Sound, and it resists, continually rearranging itself into notes and progressions that annoy him, that are discordant or strange or obstinately clever in ways that are not apparent to Patrick for the first seven or so play-throughs. By the time he has it hammered into place on the page—or maybe by the time it has _him_ hammered into place, because although you can hear Patrick in it, it doesn’t sound like any other thing Patrick has written—the edges of the sky are beginning to lighten. Dawn. He’s been at this for hours.

It’s a crabby but triumphant Patrick who picks out the new melody on his acoustic the next afternoon, workshopping it with Joe to see if they can get a song out of it. He is in no mood to deal with Local Asshole Pete Wentz, who barges in to the storage room they’re using for a practice space and cries, “That’s my song. You stole my song!”

For a long-suffering moment, all Patrick can do is stare at him. Today the obnoxious bassist is dressed like 1994 Courtney Love: shredded-up jeans that are more hole than fabric, scuffed Docs, tight black tee, a baggy flannel. Patrick resolutely does _not_ find him handsome. Instead, he focuses on how dumb Pete’s fauxhawk is. The surge of irritation and offense he feels is disproportionate, but he prefers it to other things his body might choose to feel about Pete, so he doesn’t question it.

“Like hell I did,” Patrick spits, angry as a snake and quicker to strike. “I was up all night writing this.”

It’s Pete’s turn to do a long stare. “ _I_ was up all night writing this.”

Joe looks from Patrick to Pete and back again, his hands floating up in a reflexive gesture of pacification. Historically, Joe has not exactly been the president of Pete’s fan club, but the atmosphere in the room has taken a sharp turn towards violent confrontation. Historically, Joe has not been a violent confrontation type of guy, either.

“Are you calling me a fucking _liar_?” Patrick is on his feet, fists clenched at his sides, body a taut line of potential energy.

“I’m calling you a fucking _thief_.” Pete’s moved to meet Patrick, crossed the cramped room to get up in Patrick’s face. They are of a height, tiny and puffed-up as sparrows, and this would be comical if it didn’t seem dire. Patrick’s got a temper, sure, but it has never led to—to _fisticuffs_ before. They’re feeding off each other, the aggression mirroring each to the other, growing exponentially. Soon it will be too late to back down, to make nice. Touring with Pete is painful enough without a literal blood feud between their bands.

“Whoa, hey guys,” Joe says, attempting to defuse the situation. He flutters back and forth like he half wants to get between them but kind of thinks he might get hit if he tries, so instead he puts a hand on Patrick’s shoulder, as if this will ground him. “Patrick’s obnoxious with artistic integrity. He sweats honor and, um, shits honesty. If he says he didn’t steal the song, he didn’t.” Pete’s burning eyes flick to Joe, but the animus of his anger and the aggressive angle of his body stay trained on Patrick. “If you were both up all night writing, is it _possible_ you… somehow… um… overheard each other? Like, where were you writing? Maybe the songs got mixed without anyone knowing?”

“That’s not possible,” Patrick insists. He’s turned his head to glare at Joe, too. The weight of their combined glaring is probably a bit much for one barely involved guitarist, but Patrick isn’t interested in talking himself down. “I wasn’t writing out loud.”

“Sometimes you hum,” Joe tries.

“I was at Denny’s,” says Pete. “Fucking alone. There’s no way this asshole was there, I’d have seen him.”

Patrick whirls back to Pete and jabs him in the chest with his finger. “I’m not an asshole, _dickbag_.” Joe pulls his hand off Patrick’s shoulder and backs up, as if to say, _I_ _did what I could. Things have escalated beyond my ability to help, now. Go ahead and punch each other, jerks._

“You are a _gaping asshole_ ,” Pete spits back. His face is scrunched up and maroon with anger. “Just give me the song back, okay? I worked really hard on it. It’s not _yours_.”

“I am so fucking sick of you messing with us!” Patrick yells. Pete opens his mouth to launch his next verbal volley and Patrick’s fist connects with it, arcing into Pete’s cheek and teeth and bottom jaw. Both parties cry out in pain and whirl away. Patrick’s face is bleeding; Pete is cradling his fist to his chest.

“But you—but he— _you_ punched _him_ ,” Joe stammers, pointing back and forth between them, trying to stitch this scene together into any kind of sense.

Patrick only has eyes for Pete. He fingers the new gash in his cheek, where his flesh was cut on his own teeth, and shows Pete the blood on his fingertips. “This is my blood,” he says unnecessarily.

Pete offers his cut knuckles for Patrick’s inspection. Patrick finds himself surprisingly gentle as his hand brushes over Pete’s fingers, turns up his palm for inspection, ghosts over the darkening bruises and blood-speckled impressions of Patrick’s teeth.

“I didn’t hit you,” Pete says wonderingly. His undamaged hand rises to Patrick’s face, his callused fingers slipping over the smooth and split parts of Patrick’s skin. He does not even seem to notice Patrick’s blood staining the pad of his thumb. His hand slides to cup Patrick’s jaw. They are staring into each other’s eyes with stunned intensity. They breathe in sync.

“Ummmmm,” Joe says. “Guys? What the fuck is going on?”

*

Privacy is hard to come by, touring poor with so many bands, which is how Pete and Patrick find themselves crammed into Joe’s decrepit AstroVan alongside all of Watch Out’s band equipment. They sit turned towards each other on the shabbily upholstered bench seat. The doors are locked. In the silence, it is hard to think of anything to say.

Pete pokes himself in the cheek, in the place Patrick’s fist hit him, in the place that throbs tender on his own face and bleeds on Patrick’s. Patrick makes a small throaty sound of pain as Pete touches his own face.

“Whoa,” whispers Pete. Patrick is staring at him, jaw clenched, eyes enormous.

Pete hesitates, then runs his thumb over his own bottom lip. The brief pleasure of sensation squeezes low in Pete’s gut. He watches Patrick shiver, feeling it. Pete cannot even blink, it feels so important that he not look away. Pete feels he could drown in all that is contained in their locked gaze.

“What did you do to us?” Patrick asks at last. Somehow, Pete can _feel_ him steeling himself to speak. Pete feels a blaze of ire, doesn’t know who it belongs to.

“ _Me_?” Pete’s half actually incredulous, half so curious and amused no manner of aspersions cast upon his person could upset him. “You’re the punchy puncher, Stump. I didn’t lay a hand on either of us.”

Talk of laying hands reminds him, suddenly, of the pubescent horror he underwent on last night’s stage. He gapes at the cut on Patrick’s cheek. Could it—? Did he—? It’s all impossible anyway; why wouldn’t it be true?

“Oh my shit!” exclaims Pete, like any true scientist making an important discovery. “When I was on stage yesterday you were totally jerking it.”

Patrick’s face blushes brilliant red. Pete feels his own cheeks heating. The younger man’s scowl is tremendous and foreboding as a planetary cataclysm. “Fuck you! I wasn’t—what does that have to do with—”

Patrick’s anger is adorable as it is confirmatory. Someone’s adrenaline is surging strong in Pete’s blood. He’s so _excited_. The air buzzes on his skin, thick with possibilities.

He grabs Patrick by the shoulders (there is a gentle pressure, tactile feedback on Pete’s own shoulders—he files that away for later exploration) and says, “ _I felt it._ ”

Patrick’s eyes widen in horror. Pete feels the fear pushing at him. Patrick’s fear. It’s impossible for him to feel it, but he does.

“What is happening to us?” Patrick whispers.

“We’re _bound_ somehow. A—an empathic link. What’s in my head is in your head, like the song. What’s in your body is in my body.” Pete is bowled over by the revelation and has no time for Patrick’s sputtering about how it’s impossible. Pete knows it’s true; it’s the only thing that can explain his bruised knuckles, Patrick’s bloody mouth. It’s the only thing that can explain this feeling in his stomach, this thundering in his chest, this throbbing in his—

“Don’t you see what this means?” Pete says, giving Patrick’s shoulders a gentle shake that echoes in his own bones. “We have to have sex with each other.”

“Will that—do you think that will reverse it?” Patrick’s eyes are wild with panic.

“No, I think it will feel fucking _incredible_ ,” says Pete.

Even knowing what will happen. Even having already learned exactly what the consequences will be. Patrick hauls off and punches Pete in the face.

*

They are both considerably bloodier when they exit the van. Patrick’s anger is catching, bleeding over into Pete’s skin.

“Okay, so I accept that fucking is out,” Pete says around his fat lip. He can feel Patrick’s bruised knuckles clench in his own arm and talks faster. “But what about playing music together? Can we try that?”

Patrick’s scowl could be seen from space. “Want to know what I’m going to try? I’m going to try staying as far the fuck away from you as possible, until—whatever _this_ is—wears off.”

“But—”

“I didn’t like you _before_ you invaded my brain,” Patrick says darkly, even though Pete can feel—thinks he can feel—a part of Patrick that _does_ like him. “I certainly don’t like you after.”

“I don’t know why I’m the one getting blamed for this,” Pete calls at Patrick’s receding back. “ _You_ made me come on stage! How’s that for a dick move!” Pete cups his hands around his mouth to make sure everyone hears him. “ _On stage_ , Patrick!”

*

As any true man of science would do in his position, Pete is conducting jack-off experiments.

He’s trying to figure out this bond thing. There are theories to test. Empirical data is needed. And, well—he knows masturbation works. Don’t look at him like that. The Stump kid’s the one who piloted the technique.

Here are things Pete would like to know: how close do they have to be for the bond to work? Is it stronger if they’re closer? Can they sense each other’s thoughts, or just feelings? What happens if they’re touching? Can Pete really make Patrick come just by getting himself off? How angry will Patrick be about this? What will Patrick’s face look like when he orgasms? What about his mouth, what will he be doing with his mouth? Is it open and slack, is he biting his lip, is his wet pink tongue out, is—

Anyway, Pete has a lot of questions. It makes sense for him to collect a lot of data.

The trouble he runs into very quickly is this: it is difficult to directly observe Patrick and jerk off at the same time. Not without being willing to masturbate in some extremely indecent situations. And even if he _were_ willing and able to do so, pulling it off (pun intended) without attracting Patrick’s attention and spoiling the whole experimental paradigm is a whole separate issue.

He tries utilizing observer report: short of breath and flushed of face, he catches Andy. “Were you anywhere near Patrick Stump five minutes ago?”

“Yes?”

“What did his mouth—um, face—look like? Did he make any… noises? Did he appear to be experiencing… excitement? Or discomfort?”

“Uh, what the fuck?”

“It’s for _science_ , Andy.”

“Dude, your _pants_ are undone.”

Like many revolutionary thinkers, Pete’s keen empirical mind is not recognized in its time.

Still, he keeps trying. Pete fucks his hand raw, trying to feel Patrick feeling it. _For science_.

His most successful experiment to date occurs, rather horribly, in a bar bathroom. Its success is a total accident: Racetraitor and Watch Out and some other guys go to a dive bar together, shuffling the underage kids past the bouncer in the middle of the herd. Pete can’t pass up the opportunity presented by the proximity to Patrick, who he’s pretty sure has been avoiding him the last few days. So Pete slips off to the frankly disgusting bathroom, gets in a stall, and sticks his hands down his pants.

He doesn’t expect Patrick to come into the bathroom.

He’s not prepared for the tiny hitched cry as Patrick sucks in his breath.

He’s so not ready to hear Patrick whisper “fuck, fuck, not again.”

Pete has to brace himself in the corner of the stall, forehead rolling against some skeezeball’s phone number, to even stay upright, the feedback loop is so intense. When they come, they come together.

He hides in the stall after, somehow not wanting to face Patrick in the aftermath, as if he can hide anything from the kid when their brains are leaking into each other. He tries to control his rabbiting heart, his desperate breathing. He can’t tell if Patrick knows he’s in there—knows how _close_ they are.

Cursing softly, Patrick washes his hands and leaves. Pete can barely stand. The link gets stronger, he concludes dizzily, when they’re closer together. It was like coming twice, not once.

Jesus. Fuck.

For his next experiment, Pete very badly wants to gather data on what it would feel like, to be touching Patrick while Patrick is touching him.

*

Patrick successfully avoids Pete Wentz for the next 3.75 days. Avoids him physically, that is: he can’t get his brain to fix on _anything_ else. Patrick wakes up thinking of Pete’s messy hair falling in his eyes; spends his waking hours stealing glimpses of Pete and feeling angry about Pete’s stupid outfits; falls asleep thinking about how soft Pete’s lips were against his knuckles and how they’d feel against his mouth.

You don’t even _want_ to know what Patrick’s dick has been thinking about.

Every time Patrick so much as brushes stage-sweat off the back of his neck before it can dampen his shirt collar, he worries sharply: can Pete feel it?

Because Patrick is feeling things in his body he can’t explain. Like when the caravan of shitty trailers and vans stopped at a gas station and Patrick, dozing in the car, woke suddenly with the taste of strawberry ice cream erupting on his tongue, and out the window spotted Pete licking a cone. Or the time he felt blissful, scouring hot water thundering down on his shoulders, even though he hadn’t showered in days, on the night that Racetraitor sprung for a motel room and Watch Out slept in their van. Or the, um, _crotch happenings_ that have been wreaking havoc on his pants and social life. Patrick doesn’t doubt for a _second_ Pete is responsible for this. He’s probably doing it on purpose. He probably finds it _funny_.

The point is, his link to this asshole is not wearing off naturally. And maybe he’s imagining it, but his skin starts aching, his bones itching, his thoughts of Pete searing through his mind til the brown tattooed forearms, the stupid eyeliner, that full fucking mouth is _it_ , is everything. Maybe he’s imagining it, but it’s almost like the thoughts are getting stronger, the longer he stays away.

At the end of the fourth day, Pete corners him.

Like, literally: Patrick is shoving a piece of pizza into his mouth in the alley next to the pizzeria where he bought it with his last crumpled single, and a hooded figure comes barreling towards him out of the darkness and grabs him roughly by the arm and Patrick is so fucking terrified he drops his slice and comes _very_ close to pissing his last pair of crotch-stain-free jeans.

“That yelping sound you just made,” pants his assailant, sounding exactly like a rapist, “was _precious_.” The assailant places a hand to his own chest and adds, “My your-heart feels like it’s bursting, dude—are you okay?”

Patrick has never felt so thoroughly crabby in his entire life. It’s Pete, of course it’s fucking Pete. Patrick rues the day he ever met this trash can human. “Don’t scare the shit out of me if you don’t enjoy heart palpitations, then, assbasket. Let go of my arm.”

Even as he says it, Patrick realizes he doesn’t _want_ Pete to. With the hand on his arm, the strange dizzy ache, the vertigo, the _wrongness_ of feeling and thinking and sensing things that are only half his, the feeling of the world narrowing down to a pinprick where he can’t breathe, can’t move enough to expand his lungs, has a fat swollen tongue and _can’t get any fucking air oh my god he’s not breathing_ —

All of that stopped, vanished utterly, the moment Pete attached himself to Patrick’s arm.

Predictably, Pete ignores his request, and Patrick is almost— _almost_ —glad.

“I missed you _so much_ ,” says Pete. Patrick never wanted to be this up-close to Pete’s stupid lovely amber eyes, his ridiculous eyelashes, the lines that frame his mouth when he’s being serious. Patrick never even wanted to know these things about Pete Wentz. So why can’t he look away?

“Stupid, right?” Pete is saying. “We’ve had, like, three conversations ever, and those were mostly your guy Joe yelling at me. But you’ve been all I can think about anyway. I’m going crazy. I’ve got Patrick-sickness. I’m Patsick. I think I’ve been having your dreams. Last night was the elephant and that thing with the swimming pool, right? It didn’t feel like one of mine.”

Patrick just gapes at Pete. He’s never told anyone about the thing with the swimming pool. He had his recurring dream about it last night.

Pete flashes an eye-crinkling, stars-hanging, sun-lighting grin. Patrick feels it as a physical loosening all through his chest. “It’s not wearing off, Patty. We need to think of something else. Unless you’ve decided you want to stay this way forever?”

Patrick doesn’t know what he can possibly say to that. He chooses, “You made me drop my fucking pizza.”

*

“This is kind of like a _date_ ,” Pete says, smiling across the plastic table at Patrick, who is sourly eating his replacement pizza.

“You’re not helping. You are incredibly un-charming,” Patrick grumbles. It doesn’t sound very scathing around a mouthful of greasy pepperoni and gooey cheese.

Pete gets a sudden gut-punch of queasiness. _Pepperoni_. “Uh, I’m a vegetarian,” says Pete.

“I’m fresh out of achievement badges, Scout.”

“No, I mean, please don’t eat pepperoni.”

“Like, in front of you?”

“Like at all.”

Patrick freezes with his slice raised, his mouth open, a look of loathing on his face. “You’re fucking joking.”

“My stomach feels weird,” Pete wheedles. “Please?”

Scowling blackly, Patrick slaps his slice back onto his plate. Not taking his glare off Pete, he calls out to the server, “My _date_ would like to order an extra large vegetarian pizza with extra every topping.”

Pete’s heart billows and soars. Patrick can probably sense it but he doesn’t care, isn’t trying to hide anything here. He will cheerfully overdraft his debit card for the chance to eat dinner with Patrick. Small, grumpy, red-cheeked, trucker-hatted Patrick Stump. Maybe it’s the mindmeld and maybe it’s true love, but Pete can’t get enough.

*

Being apart gets harder. Pete gets weak and shaky first; then the vertigo sets in. There’s an ache in his chest like it’s been burnt out, hollow with a taste like battery acid. Not long after that, if he doesn’t go find Patrick, the vomiting stars. It gets so he feels so drained, so empty, he can barely cross the festival grounds.

Pete doesn’t know what happens after that. Death, probably. He’s always gotten to Patrick before the reaper appears.

Listen: Pete knows Patrick doesn’t like him very much. He’s trying not to overdo it. He doesn’t know how long they’re going to be stuck like this. He doesn’t want to think about what happens when the summer ends. He doesn’t want to think about what happens if Patrick stops letting him come round, cling to his arm a minute, and take his first real breath in hours.

*

“We need to talk about Pete Wentz.”

Patrick has rarely seen Joe look so foreboding. Usually that look means We Need To Talk About Band Practice Attendance or The Van Needs Costly Repairs or Our Lead Singer/Bassist Started Boning That Dude From Blitztown And Anyway We Need A New Lead Singer/Bassist. Patrick’s heart quickens under the weight of that serious gaze now, in conjunction with Pete Wentz’s dread name. They _all_ want answers about Pete Wentz. Patrick sure doesn’t have any.

“I don’t know—how much I have to say on that topic,” Patrick says, guard up.

Joe’s eyes grow large and incredulous. “I watched you punch his mouth over a stolen song, and it made _your face_ bleed. Like—it is reasonable for me to have questions.”

Patrick drops his face into his hands and groans. “All the answers are embarrassing. And unbelievable. And—stupid.”

“I want them anyway.” Joe sounds slightly crabby. Patrick supposes he’s been kind of an evasive, avoidant jerk ever since he and Pete became, like, an X-Files episode.

Looking at his scuffed shoes through his fingertips, Patrick confesses all. “We have some kind of—link. I feel what his body feels. Sometimes I know his thoughts. Not like telepathy, where Jean Grey hears stream-of-consciousness narrative _words_ , but—I get the sense of it. Colors, sounds, emotions. Pictures sometimes, if the thought is really strong. And he, um, he has the same for me. And I’ve been getting cold and achy and nauseous when I get too far away from him for too long. It’s… I’m scared,” he adds, because they’re being honest so why not.

Patrick peeks up at Joe to see how he’s taking it. Joe is flush-faced and unreadable. He asks, “Does he know we’re talking about him right now?”

Patrick has never tried to use his—his Pete-sense for anything specific before. Really, he’s spent the last week trying to damnedest to ignore the whole thing. So it’s clumsy at first, reaching out, _feeling_ for Pete, like the space between their minds is a dark room Patrick’s trying to navigate by touch. Patrick finds him like a lightswitch he already knew the location of—it’s a straight shot. Pete must be nearby, he thinks, then wonders why he thinks that. Pete’s awareness is fuzzy and unfocused, hard to make out. Patrick feels warmth, smallness. It is dark. He hears—yes—soft snoring.

Patrick opens his eyes, taking a wild moment to re-orient to the tiny hotel room they splurged on for the night. (You can only stretch so long between showers. Then you can only stretch so far beyond that.)

“I think he’s sleeping,” Patrick says.

Joe looks relieved. “So, um,” he says not at all casually, “you’ll be spending a lot of time with him, probably, if it makes you sick to be apart?”

Patrick is horrified at the prospect. Isn’t having Pete’s thoughts in his head enough? Must he be _around_ Pete, too? “I fuckin’ hope not,” says Patrick. “We hate that guy.”

“Yeah, uh… can you find out what he thinks of me,” Joe asks the floor. He’s definitely blushing now.

Patrick almost wishes he knew what Joe was thinking but he stops himself from saying it out loud. Just in case. The thought is like being struck by lightning—scorching, galvanic, fucking eye-opening. The wish, his _wish_! “I wish I knew what went on in that guy’s head,” he said. What if that’s what linked them? What if they can just—unwish it?

Patrick’s heart fills to burst. He’s so excited his jumps to his feet. “I have to go!” he cries, and he flees their hotel room, leaving a stunned, still-blushing Joe open-mouthed in his wake.

*

Patrick, charging down the motel hallway like a Pete-seeking missile, nearly collides with Pete’s bandmate coming the opposite way. He’s dark-haired, bespectacled, and quiet, which is Patrick’s excuse for not knowing his name. If Pete were awake, Patrick bets he’d know the kid’s name implicitly. Typical Pete Wentz, only around to be a pain in the ass, cognitively vacant when his thoughts might be useful. _Wake up, I need to talk to you_ , Patrick thinks at him. Patrick has no idea how this whole thing works, but it’s worth a try, anyway.

For the time being, Patrick grabs bandmate guy by the shoulders and says,  “Drummer! I emergency-need Pete. Can you let me into your room?”

The drummer’s eyes flick over him in a way Patrick does not entirely care for. “Not in a sex way,” Patrick feels compelled to add, mortified. “Um—it’s complicated.”

“Sure,” drummer guy says. He leads Patrick down the hall towards Room 234. “But you wouldn’t be the first person to try it. In a sex way.”

Patrick’s horror knows no bounds. “You recognize me, don’t you? I’m not, like, a groupie. I drum for Watch Out. I’m on this tour for legitimate reasons!”

“Sure,” the guy says again. Maybe Pete surrounds himself with infuriating people deliberately, to feel more at home. The drummer smirks at Patrick’s hand-writing agitation and offers the comfort, “I wouldn’t let you in if I didn’t know you, man. Patrick, right? I’m Andy.”

Patrick is so grateful he considers kissing Andy on the mouth. He’s got enough problems, though. He’s not adding that one.

A minute later, he’s alone in a dark hotel room with a sleeping Pete. A wild, preposterous thought creeps through his head— _you could just crawl in beside him_ —that Patrick would very much like to blame on Pete. Some kind of, um, subconscious slippage. Yes. That.

With a total absence of tenderness, Patrick prods Pete’s slumbering form and barks, “Rise and shine, dickhead!”

Pete rolls over groaning, hugging a pillow over his face. Patrick sees Pete’s morning wood tent the bedsheets only a moment before he feels the pull in his own groin. The outrageous voice suggesting he join Pete in bed is getting louder. This is not endearing.

“I need to talk to you,” Patrick spits through gritted teeth. Stubbornly, his gaze refuses to unglue from Pete’s warm, sleepy erection.

Then Pete’s arm flails out, catching Patrick completely off guard, and topples him onto the bed. Patrick is paralyzed, like when electricity from a fumbled power outlet runs rigid through you. He can’t breathe or move or think. Pete rolls towards him, losing his pillow and tossing an arm over Patrick’s waist, and Patrick is _definitely_ not gonna survive this, and then Pete’s lips catch his in a musty-mouthed kiss.

Pete is all softness. Patrick can _feel_ him, inside and out: not just his lips or strong arms or warm, bare chest, but all the muzzy barely conscious thoughts and dissipating dreams and the heat of longing in his heart and the throb of needing between his legs. Patrick sucks his breath in and Pete _floods_ him, taste smell heart mind nerves. There is so much. He is almost swept away—obliterated in the tidal way of Pete. He almost wants to be.

It is the very best sort of kiss.

 _Kiss_.

Patrick comes back to himself enough to open his eyes, to see Pete’s eyes close-up. His are open too—awake.

Patrick comes back to himself the rest of the way and shoves Pete off of him, scrabbling away with such force and fervor that he goes over the edge of the bed. Patrick lands badly on his tailbone and lets out a muffled yelp. On the bed Pete groans again, feeling it too. Patrick can’t even pretend it didn’t hurt. There is no hope of dignity.

Patrick glares fucking murder up at Pete, tousle-headed and with his chin on the end of the bed. He peers down at Patrick curiously. “That’s a nice way to wake up,” he says, voice soft and sweet with sleep. As if he’s innocent.

Patrick balls all his hate up in his heart as hard as he can, shoving it outward. He hopes Pete feels it. “Uh, that was basically statutory rape. It was not _nice_. I could call Child Protective Services right now!”

With no urgency whatsoever, Pete scrunches his face in an enormous yawn. “Could not,” he says when at last the yawn has worked its way through. “You’re 17.” Pete taps his temple knowingly; not for the first time, Patrick’s own brain has betrayed him.

“I fucking hate you right now,” Patrick says forcefully, in case Pete missed the message. Patrick focuses very hard on the hate and ignores all other feelings, especially those coming from Pete. Especially those happening below the waist. Without dignity on the floor, Patrick crosses his legs to hide the, um, _situation_ that Pete fucking knows about anyway.

“There’s room up here,” Pete says, patting the bed beside him. Really, Patrick might have to punch him again.

Pete keeps grinning with every tooth, like he is personally responsible for reflecting back enough sunlight to light the continent. Patrick either wants him to stop or grin at him that way every day forever. With their thoughts all muddled, it’s hard to tell.

Well, first order of business: sort that shit out.

“I think I know why this happened to us,” Patrick says, which is what he came here to fucking say in the first place. “I think I know how to reverse it.”

*

It is 11:10 and they are arguing about whether or not they should be holding hands. Patrick is giving him that cute murderous badger look he likes to do and Pete is opening and closing his hands like a lonely crab.

“We’re gonna _miss_ it!” Patrick yells at last. Pete can feel his exasperation and fears for both their hearts. “I am not waiting twelve goddamn hours to try this again!”

Pete is prepared to surrender when Patrick thrusts his hands into Pete’s empty snappers. The cell phone display turns to 11:11 and Patrick closes his eyes. His lips move with the ardency of his silent wish. Pete can’t read lips but Patrick’s thoughts give him the words: _I wish I wasn’t bound to Pete Wentz, I wish I wasn’t bound to Pete Wentz, I wish—_

Pete closes his eyes too, but that doesn’t help him get away from it.

He can’t bring himself to wish the same thing.

It’s 11:11 and all Pete’s wishing for is for things to stay the same.

Pete tips his head forward, so their foreheads touch, and breathes in the good, slightly sweaty smell of Patrick.

All Pete’s wishing for is him.

*

After the kiss doesn’t—after the _wish_ doesn’t work—the bond goes ahead and continues getting stronger. It gets so it’s hard for Pete to be away from Patrick for as much as an hour, and he gets lightheaded and queasy when Patrick’s out of his range of sight.

This makes the driving pretty much torture. Pete rides in the back, moaning piteously with a damp towel over his eyes. Andy pulls over from him to throw up every 30 minutes or so. The whole band has about had enough.

Pete’s wondering why he’s the only one who feels it, why it’s getting worse for him and Patrick seems unaffected, keeping his cavalier distance. Pete’s wondering this as he heaves on the side of I90 and a maroon AstroVan crunches onto the shoulder behind him. The wave of nausea passes and Pete straightens up, wondering, and Patrick is standing there, eyes downcast and chin jutted out like a challenge, cheeks pale and splotchy with ill health.

“Can I ride with you?” Patrick asks. Cars whiz by them and Patrick offers no explanation. Pete and Patrick climb into the same van and no one needs to pull over after that.

Pete stops wondering.

*

Soon they’re sleeping in the same place, too. On the same shitty square of scrounged floor, cramped in the back of the same van, on top of the same sleeping bag on the disgusting pavement beneath the van when it’s too hot to sleep inside it. Patrick goes to great lengths to erect barricades and to sleep as far away as possible because without these precautions—and sometimes in spite of them—they wake huddled up together like puppies. Like lovers. Patrick strikes the comparison furiously from his mind, hoping Pete didn’t catch it before he did.

He hasn’t given up on wishes yet. Religiously, twice a day at 11:11 and innumerable times in between, Patrick wishes with his whole heart for the freak binding to be broken. Only—he can’t quite wish with his whole heart, can he? He has no fucking idea what the Pete part of it is wishing for.

Pete, Patrick suspects, is the problem.

He starts collecting luck: gas station rabbits’ foot keychains, fluff-headed dandelions, streaks across the sky that are either meteors or satellites, handfuls of disappointing clovers in every trampled post-show field, heads-up pennies that he carries like talismans. Lightning bugs rise from the grass at night as if every dusk sky is the same one, all across the Midwest. If Patrick gets the chance, he catches them and whispers his wish into his cupped hands before he lets them go. Pete complains that their feet tickle his palms, that by the transitive property he’s now infected with bug germs. Patrick wipes his hands on Pete’s face. Patrick pretends to roughhouse with Pete because he hates him, not because touching Pete’s skin is the only thing that makes him feel healthy and whole.

Sometimes, when Pete tries to hold Patrick’s hand, Patrick lets him. He broadcasts his perpetual annoyance through his skin instead of letting go.

*

Sometimes, on long car rides, Patrick will be watching Pete and his thoughts will drift idly to an image of Pete on his knees, unfastening Patrick’s pants. Sometimes the thought goes on for a while before Patrick realizes and banishes it. On these occasions he stares hard out the window, blushing furiously, not allowing himself to as much as glance at Pete. He tries to play it cool.

He’s never sure whose head the thought starts in, is the thing. He’s never sure which one of them he feels _liking_ it. It could be Pete, right?

Right?

The dreams are worse. He wakes up one time to Pete’s mouth in his ear, saying, “Hey. Talk to me. I’m bored.” There is nothing more horrifying than knowing Pete may have seen what he was dreaming, than knowing that utterly beyond his control, the thoughts in his head might… drift.

Nothing except how Patrick’s very dread of it seems to invite Pete’s attention, and Pete’s eyes flick to Patrick’s groin and, likely, the half-hard penis suppressed but not concealed by his jeans. He hears-feels Pete’s breath hitch.

Patrick whips his head back to the window, stares hard at the passing scenery with his nose all but pressed to the glass. The harder he tries _not_ to picture Pete on his knees, grinning up at Patrick, the stronger the image becomes. It figures that daydream-Pete and real-Pete would be identically obnoxious.

Patrick’s posture is rigid as his dick. He can feel the warmth of Pete’s body, insinuated into his personal space, easy to touch. Patrick bites his lip hard, hoping the pain will shock sense into him.

It does not.

Instead, he imagines Pete’s tongue lapping the head of his cock. He imagines tangling his hands up in Pete’s hair, holding his head in place. A soft sound escapes his lips and he can’t tell if it’s in the van or in the daydream or both.

Then daydream Pete swallows Patrick deeper into his throat and, without Patrick ever thinking of it in his _life_ , presses a finger against his asshole.

The very undignified yelping sort of sound that comes out of Patrick next is _definitely_ in the van and in the daydream. Patrick tries to hold his ragged breath, tries to act like he’s not fucking Pete’s face in his imagination, and hopes so desperately Joe and Rami don’t say anything about the noise he just made that approaches prayer.

In the van, Pete’s quickened breath is in his ear. In his mind’s eye, Pete slips his finger _inside_ Patrick and sucks, swallows, sucks on Patrick’s dick. Patrick’s hands tighten in Pete’s hair and grip Pete’s sweaty hand and Patrick can’t keep straight, anymore, which is happening where. Pete’s hand squeezes his own, Pete’s hand buries his finger up to the second knuckle, finding the limb-melting sweetness of Patrick’s prostate and every version of Patrick is _overcome_ , lets go, tumbles into rapture.

In the van Pete’s open mouth pants on Patrick’s neck, Pete’s head resting in the crook of Patrick’s shoulder, their hands squeezed bloodless white between them. In the van Patrick lets his head tip forward against the window, staring deliriously out at the unspooling miles of surreal, cornfieldy Americana. In his mind Pete swallows Patrick’s orgasm and licks his lips and stares up through lashes with sultry adoration. In his mind Pete says, “Patty, I think we just mindfucked.”

Patrick _definitely_ didn’t imagine him saying that.

*

After a week of badgering, Pete gets himself invited to Watch Out’s band practice. Joe keeps shooting him suspicious glares. “I’m sorry, you’re not on the practice schedule, you’ll have to go,” he says so seriously when Pete arrives that Pete really can’t tell if he’s allowed to stay.

“Oh god, if you can get rid of him, please do,” Patrick says, setting up his battered kit. Joe laughs and squeezes Pete’s shoulder and says, “C’mon then, asshole, you get the broken amp,” and Pete relaxes.

Playing music with Patrick is better than any of the other things their link has enabled. Yes—better than their tug-of-war writing session, better than the jack-off research study, better than the psychic sex scene and real-world orgasms they shared somewhere in the middle of Indiana. Pete plays along with Watch Out’s songs, keeping pace with their actual bassist, Rami.

He’s surprised how well he knows the songs—it’s not like he started obsessively attending each of their performances prior to the mindlink—but then he realizes it’s Patrick’s intimate knowledge of each song’s internal mechanics that guides him. They join joyfully, for once one in purpose and intent. Patrick supplies the backbone, the pulse, and instinctively follows any improvisation. He is so easily _there_ , just inside Pete’s awareness; Pete’s whole body resonates with each individual note in every song.

“You can play the bass, too,” Pete accuses, sidling up to Patrick when they break. “You were feeding me the part.”

Patrick glistens a little, sweaty from his exertions. He is _so beautiful_. He grins up at Pete. His damp bangs stick to his forehead. “That’s not all I can play,” he says. Somehow the words sound filthy from that mouth. Pink-cheeked, gold-haired: two angel cookies with lewd, lewd filling. Pete’s heart is beating so hard he can’t speak. Patrick notices, grins wider.

A few minutes later Patrick’s wearing Joe’s guitar. Instead of working meticulous through Watch Out songs, they are doing something new. Heart to heart, ear to ear, instinct to instinct—they are making music together. Quicker, sharper, brighter, _better_ than just one mind. They are _creating_.

It feels so much more natural, so much more right, than any attempt Pete’s ever made on his own. It happens without need for words; they can just think, show, imply to the other what they want the melody to be, how it should _feel_ , and then they bring it together into being. The song doesn’t exist in either of them, but belongs entire to the golden thrumming space between. Patrick is grinning fiercely; Pete begins to sing. He doesn’t know where the words are coming from but they both hear it. Cautiously, Patrick joins his voice to Pete. Together they sing.

After, Pete feels like he’s just run a marathon. His body is invigorated, exhilarated—enervated, drained. Wholly spent and wholly satisfied. Actually, what he feels like is—

“Gross,” interrupts Patrick. He’s sitting on his milk crate/kit stool; Pete is sitting on concrete, leaning against his legs. At least til Patrick pulls his legs away. “If you keep comparing this to sex I will never play with you again.”

Pete opens his mouth to retort. Patrick glares at him forbiddingly, says, “ _Don_ _’t even ask._ ”

“You like me, though,” Pete says confidently. “Right?”

“No one likes you, Pete.”

But Pete can feel what Patrick feels. Pete knows it’s a lie.

*

Then there’s the night Pete engages in what Joe calls _grenade jumping_. The goal is to hook up with someone who, in their fervor, is so eager to get a relatively unknown Summerfest musician home that they agree to let the rest of the band crash at their place, too.

Patrick sits straight and stiff on some girl’s couch, trying so, so hard not to feel what’s happening in the next room—nothing below the waist yet, thank god—and gripping Joe’s hand like it is his only tether to sanity.

“Distract me,” Patrick keeps begging. But Joe seems uncomfortable and unhappy too, even when Patrick loosens his grip. Neither of them will say why. It’s not long before Joe retreats into his headphones and curls up in an armchair, slipping off to sleep like Rami before him, leaving Patrick utterly alone.

Patrick sits in the center of the couch as carefully and tightly as he can, as if he can control this _whole situation_ if he sits still hard enough. As if he can be the master of what’s in his head and in his body if only he can achieve perfect physical stillness, if he can be the master of every last millimeter of skin so that not even a breath gets by him without being measured, timed, inspected, approved. He keeps his hands loose on his lap, lest they ball into fists. He forbids his feet from moving. He lines himself up so there are identical lengths of couch cushion pattern to each side. Time does not pass any more easily than he sits on this sofa.

At last, late in the night, Pete creeps down the hall to join him.

“Uh, hey,” Pete says. He leans in the doorway, the loose sloppiness of his posture incredibly irritating in the face of Patrick’s precise, unyielding control. “Was that weird for you?”

“Yes.” Patrick says it very exactly, worried what else will come out of his mouth if he relaxes.

“We didn’t, um—”

“I know.” Patrick allows his eyes to move ten degrees to the left and thirty degrees upwards, to fall on Pete. He is blue-grey, washed out in the unlit room. “I—felt.”

Giving up another scrap of self-defensive stillness, Patrick scoots a little. This is easier than opening his mouth and voicing the invitation. Pete crosses the room in two quick, grateful strides, taking his meaning perfectly.

Without verbal negotiation, they lay down together, a head at each end of the couch. Pete could be sleeping in an actual bed tonight, a luxury Patrick only dreams of at this point in the tour, but he chose to stick his feet in Patrick’s face on this shitty couch instead. Not under oath and penalty of perjury would Patrick admit how happy this makes him feel.

“I don’t like doing that,” Pete says to the ceiling, once they’ve settled.

“So why do it?” There. Patrick allows out of his mouth one of the many, many things he does not want himself to say in this moment. He says it calmly, flatly, like he doesn’t care about the answer. Even with Pete floppy and draped half on top of him, he can almost believe he’s in control.

Pete shifts, which does not relieve the emotional discomfort. One of them, at least, is aching. Patrick can’t tell who, but it’s all he can feel. “The three of you fit pretty well in the van, to sleep. I’m the one who’s been crashing, who makes it like, extra sweaty and cramped in there. I—owe you guys. For putting up with me.”

Their hands are almost perfectly aligned, Pete’s fingertips even with Patrick’s wrist and Pete’s wrist even with Patrick’s fingertips. They could press palm to palm, touch in a way that was deliberate instead of this accidental, limbs-fall-as-they-may, couch flop. They could, with barely a gesture, demonstrate—somehow—that this was _meant_. That they meant it.

Patrick’s mouth is dry just thinking about it.

They don’t.

“I’m the reason we have this stupid link in the first place,” Patrick says after a moment of Pete not taking his hand. The happiness of Pete elbowing his way onto the couch is bleeding out fast. “I didn’t like—feeling you kiss someone else,” Patrick blurts out because fuck, they’re sharing brains, Pete probably _knows_ already, and if Pete can read his mind _why hasn’t he taken Patrick’s hand._

“Who would you rather I…?” Pete’s tone is suspended between sorrow and suggestion. He’s teasing, testing, seeing what he can get away with. Even in this fraught moment, trying to trick Patrick’s sleepy, jealous brain into giving something away.

But tonight, anyway, Patrick’s mind is a safe. He jabs Pete in the armpit with his foot as punishment. “No one,” he says. “Can’t you just keep it in your pants til we break this link?”

“It won’t be easy,” Pete says gravely. Patrick jabs him again.

“Yeah, well, maybe now you’ll be motivated.” A beat. “Don’t. Um. Don’t do this again.”

“Anything for you, darling,” Pete says grandly, in a Gene Kelly accent. Patrick kicks him again, rolling over.

Silence settles, stretches. Patrick’s mind continues to churn, the polar opposite of the stillness he’s forced over his skin. He knows Pete’s mind churns too; he can hear it. Patrick gingerly shuts a mental door on all the shit he’s not willing to talk about, then says, “I can’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”

“Make yourself useful, then, asshole,” Patrick demands. He tries and fails spectacularly to mask the fondness in his tone. Pete erodes his control so quickly. “Tell me a story.”

In the end, exhausted as they both are, they still stay up all night.

*

It isn’t like falling.

It’s just—one morning Pete wakes up with Patrick’s dreams muzzy in his head, with Patrick’s perennially cold feet tangled up with his calves, with the complete certainty that he’s in love with Patrick.

It arrives to him as a fact, fully formed and absolute. A physical law of the universe—a grand unifying theory of Pete. The earth rotates the sun; water results from the bond of two hydrogen molecules with one oxygen; Pete’s in love with Patrick.

It only makes sense.

He doesn’t know when it started, exactly. He has been _aware_ , in certain carnal senses of the word, of the angelic-faced rouge-kneed blinking neon “jailbait” sign Watch Out employs as a drummer, since before this tour even began. They run in the same music circles, or at least around the edges of the same Venn diagram. But how much thought did Pete really spare him, before this tour? Before he took up playful battle with Joe Trohman for the pleasure of being obnoxious towards someone as cute and angry and quick to blush as Patrick? Before their minds got tangled up into one? When _exactly_ did his feelings spread out of his groin and colonize his heart?

Today the link, their bond, feels fated. Feels meant to be.

Feels like a terrifying liability. If Patrick finds out that for his latest offense, Pete has actually _fallen in love with him_ , he will be furious. Not in the charming way. He will be—disgusted. Because he hates this. He hates what they share. He hates Pete, sometimes. Pete’s in his head. That means he feels it too.

 

Pete tries to tamp down the unlooked-for love, which he’s not used to doing. Not used to doing successfully, anyway. He’s a juggernaut of poorly controlled emotions. It’s what makes him so fun at parties. So insufferable in everyday life. Pete tries to tamp it down before Patrick wakes up and _feels_ it. In all its drowning, no-one-asked-for-this, unrequited _hugeness_.

Pete tries to tamp it down and does not hope to succeed. As usual, Pete has no fucking idea what to do.

*

Andy, on the other hand, usually does know what to do. Of all the guys in Racetraitor, Andy is the one Pete gets along with best. He’s not quite sure how to broach the topic of Pete-and-Patrick in a way that doesn’t make him sound insane, so he just kind of plunks himself down in Andy’s sticky vinyl booth and _says_ it.

“In a hypothetical scenario wherein my consciousness has become inexplicably fused with someone else’s,” he proposes casually, perusing a laminated Denny’s menu like this is standard breakfast conversation, “against their will. _And_ I’ve fallen in love with them. Hypothetically, how would you proceed?”

Andy forks a big bite of waffle into his mouth, probably to buy time. He chews slowly and with apparent relish.

Pete can’t take it. More words come out: “And, hypothetically, it’s Patrick.”

“You’re saying you have a psychic link with Patrick,” Andy paraphrases.

“Hypothetically. Yes.”

“The guys whose van you’ve been riding in? The one you slept on Dan’s friend’s living room floor with last night? You’re in love with that Patrick?”

“Just, say I was.”

“Like, for argument’s sake? Because I honestly thought he was your boyfriend.”

Pete drops his head onto the tabletop and permits himself to moan. His poor fucking heart can’t deal with all this misery. If Patrick were his boyfriend, he’d have no problems at all.

Andy, a bad person, laughs at Pete’s suffering. “I never thought I’d live to see Pete Wentz’s advances spurned! You get everyone you want. It’s always so easy for you! And very annoying to watch.”

“You could enjoy this less,” Pete says to the tabletop. His voice vibrates a puddle of spilled syrup.

“I’m sorry, I’ll be serious.” Andy draws his hand down in front of his face like he’s someone who emphasizes the second syllable of the word ‘actor.’ “So the problem you’re having—it’s that he doesn’t want you back?”

“ _Yes._ ”

“Because it seems like—I mean, he’s acting like he wants you back.”

Pete’s head flies off the table so fast he gets whiplash. “Do you think so?”

Andy reaches over and peels a straw wrapper off Pete’s cheek. “Although that could just this be this wacko hypothetical telepathic bond thing. If we’re still going with that?”

Pete nods. Affirmative.

“So it could be brainwashing. Even Stockholm syndrome!” muses Andy, _super duper_ helpfully.

With a slap and a groan, Pete’s face reacquaints itself with the table.

“Based on the current level of melodrama, is it safe to assume you’re not going to do the reasonable thing and just ask him?”

“Obviously I cannot _ask_ him.” Pete glares up from the tabletop. “Are you even _trying_ to help me?”

Andy fills his mouth with waffle before his smirk betrays him. He really _is_ enjoying this. Pete can no longer recall why he ever thought he got along well with Andy.

“It’s a consent problem,” Andy says at length. “No matter what he says, um, you can’t be sure you’re not… psychically influencing him to say it.”

“Hypothetically,” mumbles Pete against the table. At this point he’s just hoping to drown in the syrup spill. Really, it’s the best possible outcome for all of them.

“Then you’ve got to break the mind meld, Mr. Spock. You’ve got to sever the psychic link.” Andy sips his coffee matter-of-factly.

Pete gapes at him. “ _Andy_ ,” he says. “You’re fucking _brilliant_.”

*

They’re playing Milwaukee, camping out on the festival grounds for three hot July days. Some of the bands have tents; some have hotel rooms; some are sleeping in, on, and under trailers and vans. Watch Out has managed to borrow a pop-up camper from someone’s reluctant uncle, and it is Pete’s main ambition to get Patrick alone in it. Not like that. Well, maybe like that. What he wants is to explain himself to Patrick. He wants to wish for the right thing, to make good on 11:11 for the first time. He wants to set Patrick free, so he can have him.

Pete doesn’t know how or why this happened, his stroke of luck and Patrick’s curse. But he wants to fix it.

Pete goes to Patrick’s set, a new pleasure of his. So many wonderful new things have come to him from this empathic bond, not least Patrick. Standing in the living, seething, jostling crowd, his chest filled with Patrick’s drumbeat and his brain swirling with Patrick’s thoughts and his gut tight with Patrick’s exhilaration—to be part of the cause and the effect at once—it is the highest he’s ever been. He feels _part of something_ , and it is terrible and completing and what he’s felt missing from his chest for most of his life. It is everything music has always done for him, times a thousand.

Not for a moment does he take his eyes off Patrick. Patrick catches his gaze a few times, scowls, and then ducks his head and smiles. Pete feels the surge of warmth in Patrick’s chest. Pete hopes Patrick feels the answering surge in his. He loves him, he loves him.

And after the set, he’s going to take Patrick back to that camper, sit him down and break the bond, then tell him, to his face, exactly that.

Pete’s heart skips nine beats at the thought. Patrick’s behatted head lifts from his kit, seeking Pete—concern. Concern, Pete believes, is a sign of fondness. If Patrick _really_ hated him, he’d be hoping for a heart attack.

The set ends and Pete fights the post-show stream of traffic to head for the small backstage area. The crowd parts and Patrick’s bandmate, the peevish but likeable Joe—Pete’s tour nemesis—is there. He’s sweaty, grinning, glowing from the stage. His face is so young and bright, lit from within. He grabs Pete by the hand and tugs, leading him, Pete assumes, towards Patrick. Everyone knows by now, Pete assumes, that the only place he wants to go in life is towards Patrick.

“I saw you watching us,” Joe calls over his shoulder, over the noise. “You’ve been watching a lot. You’ve been around a lot!”

Pete feels his face flushing. Does Joe know? Joe saw the revelatory punch a few weeks ago, when this all started, so he must know something. There’s been something… knowing, almost coy, in how Joe interacts with him since. Certainly the animosity has significantly lessened. Pete figures this means one of two things: Joe knows the details of the mindmeld, or he knows Pete’s totally in love with Patrick. It is possible, he supposes, that Joe knows about both.

“Well, uh, I like you! And you guys sound great!” Pete calls back.  


Joe flashes him a toothy grin as they emerge together out of the press of the crowd. God, Pete hopes Joe hasn’t said anything to Patrick. That crocodile grin means only one thing: _I know your secrets._ Pete reaches out, feeling for Patrick, seeing if he can use their link like a homing beacon. It’s a technique he’s been working on. He can feel a buzzy rush, Patrick’s excitement and impending post-show adrenaline crash. Pete turns his body like a compass needle, trying to zero in.

Pete’s so wrapped up in the internal cues of Patrick’s experience, he’s totally missing the external cues of his own. So he’s caught completely off guard when Joe darts his head forward, kisses Pete on the mouth.  


*

Patrick _feels_ the kiss.

He stops in his tracks, stunned by the force of the sensation. For one slipped moment it’s like he’s being kissed on his own lips—it feels exactly the same. Such a wild, complicated roar of emotion comes burbling up to follow it that some instinct he didn’t know he possessed (and could have fucking made use of earlier, thank you very fucking much) slams _shut_ , tamping down his—psychic—senses so the hurricane of feels strikes as a dull, indistinct gale. It is the difference between being caught out in a severe thunderstorm and listening to it beat against the ceiling and walls when you’re safe indoors. He loses detail, nuance; but he stays dry.

Unless he’s just experienced a visitation by a smooching ghost, Pete Wentz has just been kissed. Just been kissed, and felt _strongly_ about it.

To his surprise and discomfort, Patrick is feeling something strong of his own about it. It’s just—he thought—well—if would be nice if you ran romantic liaisons by the guy you shared a brain and body with beforehand, wouldn’t it? Out of, he doesn’t know, _courtesy_? Hadn’t they discussed exactly that after the grenade jumping incident? And there hadn’t been fucking _feelings_ then—

With all the time they’ve been spending together—the conversations where the border between word and thought gets so blurred he loses track of it, til he can’t feel the space between sub- and –vocalization, til they’re sitting wordlessly staring at each other arguing heatedly about music genres and freaking out everyone’s bandmates with their intense, freaky silence. The kiss, okay. The whatever-it-was that happened in Patrick’s daydream, the one he’s pretty sure Pete was in too. He’s thought about it. He’s _been_ thinking about it. It’s just—he thought—he thought he felt—he thought _Pete_ —

Fuck. Here’s what Patrick felt for sure: Pete, getting kissed. Pete’s heart all but exploding. And if he slows it down—if he unpacks the tidal wave of thrill and exhilaration, the shock and volume of Pete’s responses—he feels _who_ kissed Pete, too.

He feels Joe.

*

Who do you go to, when you’re 77 miles from home and you’re upset because the two people you’re closest to—that is, your best friend and the random asshole you have an empathic bond with—are making out with each other? Just like Patrick fucking _wished_ they would, weeks ago, before he knew what wishing could do?

Weirdly enough, rather than any of his own friends or phone contacts, Patrick chooses Andy. Andy Hurley—drummer of Racetraitor—someone he has vicariously felt so much love and warmth towards that it feels like his own. His own comfort, safety, trust—his own long-term and loving friendship, even though in reality he and Andy have only spoken a few times. On all those occasions Patrick has been decidedly grumpy, sleeping or riding next to Pete because being apart gets harder and harder each day, and not fucking pleased about it. He’s feeling a little peaked now, to tell the truth: he hasn’t been near enough to lay a steadying hand on Pete’s skin since before the set. Touch has become… upsettingly important. It’s _all_ become upsetting and important. Fuck. Fuck!

The whole time Patrick’s searching the Henry Maier Festival Park, he’s slamming down his new defenses against Pete, he’s crying as some kind of pressure release from all the shit he’s blocking out, and he’s trying to figure out what the fuck he’s going to say to explain  himself to Andy. Oh—and he’s wasting a lot of energy on sheer, chthonic _terror_ he will run into Pete and Joe. Their faces glued together, their hands interlaced, their faces and hearts so fucking _happy_ they burn holes through the cellulose film of Patrick’s life. Every time the dull roar gets louder, signaling proximity, he dives into a crowd and heads in the opposite direction.

It’s an indirect method of travel.

Still, he finds Andy before he’s figured it out. The what to say part. He opens his mouth to try and no sound comes out. He starts crying harder instead.

He has done nothing to deserve it—he barely knows the guy and he’s been in a snit for the whole of their acquaintance—but Andy’s look of alarm is followed by a strong-armed, wordless hug.

“Uhhh, are you okay?” Andy asks after a few minutes of Patrick clutching him and borderline sobbing. Patrick, unable to breathe properly, kind of chokes on his own tears in response. Andy stiffens in the hug, asks sharply, “What did Pete do?”

“It’s not—he didn’t—” Feeling extremely fucking ridiculous, Patrick pulls away and scrubs at his wet face with the bottom of his t-shirt. He turns so Andy cannot see his face or pale belly, remembering too late that he feels stupid, is shy. “I don’t even _like_ Pete. I shouldn’t _care_ ,” he insists. Somehow this is easier to say when he doesn’t have to look at anybody.

“If you could give me even a little bit more information,” Andy prompts.

Patrick half-turns back towards him. The sun is beginning to set, casting long shadows; he hopes this will cast his blotchy, tearful face into at least a little dusk. This part of the park is nearly empty, but it’s still _public_. He wouldn’t want to _disgrace_ himself.

“Pete is currently hooking up with my best friend,” Patrick says, looking carefully at Andy’s super fascinating shoes. “I, um. I felt it.”

“So the mind meld thing—that wasn’t Pete bullshit? Huh.” He sounds so chill about it, Patrick has to look at his face. His expression is gentle and unperturbed. There are wet tear spots on his right shoulder. Patrick looks away again.

“I don’t know why he’d be kissing anyone else, though. Maybe you can… check… again?”

Patrick meets this with the look of horror it deserves. “I threw up some kind of panic self-defense floodgate. I don’t know how. I’m not fucking _opening_ it. What if they’re…? I can’t _feel_ my best friend doing that. Like, fucking imagine!”

Andy’s face twists. “That’s fair,” he acknowledges. “What if we find them and ask?”

Patrick doesn’t even answer. Andy sighs.

“Of course not. Okay. Do you want… _me_ to find them and ask?”

He sounds like this is the last thing he wants to do, but he offers it anyway. Andy really _is_ a good guy.

Normally in this kind of situation, Patrick would just—avoid Pete for the rest of time. But their fucking unbearable bond makes that impossible. He’s sweaty and shaky and fairly obviously emotionally volatile from the distance already, and the festival grounds are truly not that large.

“No. I don’t know. Just… fuck, Andy! Does this mean I’ve got a fucking _crush_ on Pete Wentz?”

Andy widens his eyes at Patrick very slowly, as if to highlight how inadequate and unnecessary the question is.

Patrick groans. “Don’t say it. I don’t even want to hear you say it.”

*

Pete can’t feel Patrick anymore.

He did this. It’s his fault. He was disloyal, and it broke the bond.

His mouth tastes of copper. His heart clots with grief. Tears touch his eyes. Inside his head, inside his chest, it is _empty._ It is cold. It is numb.

Patrick is gone.

Pete reels back from the kiss, when a moment ago he had been stunned into stillness, neither returning nor rejecting Joe’s affection.

Now he looks at Joe with horror, heartbreak. It is clearly not the reaction Joe had hoped for.

“Um,” says Joe. “Was that—okay? I like you too.”

Pete doesn’t know how to say _I meant I liked your band_ without sounding like just the biggest asshole in the world. Which he is. A tour spent messing with each other takes on a whole different tone in light of this—kiss. Have they been _flirting_ this whole time? Oh, man. Trust Pete to _not even notice_.

At a loss for any words appropriate for the situation, Pete says, “But—Patrick.”

Joe tips his head to one side. “Oh, yeah. You guys are still mind-linked or whatever, right? I don’t think he’ll mind. I mean, he’s not your biggest fan, but he’s a very supportive dude.”

One crushing blow after another. Pete is getting _pummeled_ today.

Pete takes his hand back from Joe, suddenly transfixed by the twin toes of their Chucks. It is hard to take his hand back, when he’s so lonely. But Joe is not his to keep.

“I have feelings for Patrick,” Pete tells the shoes. He speaks quietly; they’re good listeners.

Into Joe’s answering silence, Pete adds, “I’m sorry. Under other circumstances, um. I would be very honored to kiss you back.”

Joe’s shoes take a step back, then another.

“Shit,” Joe says at last. “I misread—this whole situation.” He sounds so embarrassed. Pete feels hideously accountable for all of this. What the fuck is he doing, making a mess of these kids’ lives?

Maybe he’s glad Patrick found a way to break the bond. Maybe it was never fate at all. Maybe Pete should take the cue and bow out of Patrick’s life for good.

But here’s the problem. The last thing Pete got from Patrick, the last thing he felt, was a blast of _hurt_. Like the kiss upset him. Like he cares about Pete after all. Like he doesn’t want Pete kissing people who aren’t him.

Are those possibilities exciting, even though Pete knows any warmth Patrick feels for him is only a side effect of Pete’s forceful occupation of his brain? Yes, of course they are. But the real problem is that Pete just can’t leave things like that between them. Hurt, and then silence.

No, he has to find Patrick. He has to explain the context of this particular kiss. He has to explain the context of some other kisses, too, both real and imaginary. And some jerk-off experiments, probably. Fuck. Pete has to apologize.

And, now that Patrick’s free of his wicked influence—now that every trace of Pete has been scraped out in that slamming wound—Pete has to find out if Patrick loves him too.

“Um, I think—I think I have to go tell Patrick I’m in love with him,” Pete says apologetically. He wants to begin the Great Patrick Hunt without delay, but he can’t leave the kid like this, all crestfallen with blazing cheeks, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.

“That’s fucking—great,” Joe says in a strangled voice. He glances up at Pete. His expression is pure misery. “I uh. I mean it,” he says. Pete is unconvinced to the highest degree.

“If it was anyone but Patrick, one glance at that fetching blush—”

“Stop, okay? Just stop,” Joe interrupts. “I mean it, that it’s great. Like, I just wanted to make out with a hot guy this summer, and you’re hot guy numero uno on this tour, and I kind of have this dumb musical crush on you? But I don’t _love_ you. You’re fucking _annoying_. If you’re for real in love with my best friend, that’s pretty fucking cool. I mean, yes, it also really sucks for me, but—but it’s a good thing for Patrick, probably. And I’m not standing in the way of good things for Patrick.”

“Are you—sure?” Pete bounces a little on his heels, impatience manifesting physically. His heart is about torn in half. He doesn’t want to leave Joe like this, doesn’t know the trick to putting Joe back together—doesn’t want to wait even a second longer before he finds Patrick, sees what else he can put right.

Joe sees it. All of it. “You are _so_ not doing me any favors by fluttering around me like my Jewish mother. You’re going to try making me matzoh soup next, I just know it. Get out of here. Go make Patrick’s day.”

“Really really?”

“I still think he hates you. But yeah, dude. Go for it.”

Pete can’t wait a second longer. Joe seems okay enough, or at least like Pete’s not making him anymore okay with his efforts. Pete makes a mental note to set him up with Andy, later: he thinks Joe deserves someone dependable, kind, and into relationship anarchy. That’s the best repayment he can think of—sparing Joe the vagaries of making out with someone like Pete while supplying him with all the virtues of making out with someone like Andy. But that is a nefarious set-up scheme for another day. Today he’s got his own precarious, unlikely romantic interlude to finagle. And time feels fucking _scarce_.

“Thank you thank you thank you!” Pete calls back to Joe. His feet are already carrying him away.

*

Patrick is freaking out. Patrick doesn’t know what to do. Patrick is totally fucking unprepared to live in a world where he can barricade Pete Wentz out of his head but still _have feelings for him._

Patrick is taking these feelings out on Joe’s guitar. He didn’t ask if he could borrow it but hey, looks like him and Joe aren’t _asking_ to borrow each other’s stuff anymore, are they.

Oh—that’s new. Thinking of Pete as _his_. When did that start? Patrick lets his thoughts brush up against that emergency floodgate between them. Behind it, Pete’s still a dulled and distant roar, like he’s underwater. Patrick insists to himself that he doesn’t miss it, having Pete warm and immediate in his head. Then he wonders who he’s insisting to, without Pete there to hear it.

He’s used to Pete being there to hear it.

Having just his own voice in his head again—as hard as he’s been wishing for it, it’s actually a little… lonely.

Patrick has spent approximately one second meditating on solitude before someone busts into the practice space and interrupts Patrick’s attempted Thriller cover. Patrick turns angrily towards the sound, fully ready to unload on Pete so fiercely he doesn’t notice Patrick’s twinge of relief or any more incriminating feelings—he doesn’t know if the emergency cocoon goes both ways—but it’s Joe in the doorway.

Patrick’s stomach doubles up and punches itself. He sort of, maybe, yes, wants to see Pete right now, but that doesn’t mean he knows what to say or do if actually presented with that scenario. He kind of doesn’t even want to _look_ at Joe right now. (Whereas Pete he definitely plans to punch.)

Patrick knows it’s not technically fair to feel mad at or betrayed by Joe. Joe isn’t the one who—who psychically seduced and brain-sexed him, and then ran off to hook up with his best friend. It isn’t _Joe_ who probably never even liked Patrick to begin with but just got twisted up and confused by the mindlink. It isn’t Joe who fell for Pete fucking Wentz, like an asshole. (Well—or maybe it is Joe who did that. But Joe’s not the person Patrick’s mad at for it. If he’s being honest, which is uncomfortable and he would prefer to avoid for as long as possible, the only person he’s truly pissed at is himself.)

(And Pete. Definitely Pete.)

(Listen, Patrick never claimed to be reasonable or fair.)

In the spirit of being neither reasonable nor fair, Patrick stabs the air with his pointer finger in the direction of Joe and accuses, “After all these weeks of making me listen to you fucking complain about Pete Wentz, you go and _kiss him_?”

Joe’s already ashen face blanches. Patrick notices for the first time how rough Joe’s looking. He files it away under ‘I Don’t Care.’

“Yeah, that’s right, I _felt_ it,” Patrick spits at Joe next. It feels so fucking good to yell. “Not that getting kissed by my best friend was on my fucking bucket list!”

“I—you knew I liked him, man!”

“Oh, did I?” Patrick snarls.

“I mean, didn’t you?” Joe sounds so truly blindsided, Patrick’s losing steam. “Pat—are you crying?”

Fuck, fuck. Patrick swipes at his traitorous tears with the back of one hand. He didn’t _ask_ for this. Pete didn’t ask for it either. It’s all been… accidental. A mistake.

“He’s in my _head_ ,” Patrick tries to explain, hating the way his voice cracks. “We share everything. It’s—I can’t explain—”

There is a terrible stretch of silence. At last Joe says, “You’re saying I should have asked you first.”

“At least one of you should have!” Patrick’s voice is tight, so close to splintering. It reveals more than his words do. He refuses to break down again. This whole day has been very fucking stupid.

“He turned me down, Patrick. If you hadn’t just started fucking yelling at me, I might have—didn’t you feel it, when he said he didn’t want me? It was highly fucking embarrassing. I mean, _I_ fucking felt it. You’re acting like there was some big, romantic mutual make-out, and I’m sorry that I hurt you but _dude_. You’re the winning suitor here. Be a little gracious about it.”

Patrick’s emotionally overloaded mind takes its time parsing this vital new information. “I think I have to talk to Pete,” he says at last.

“God, _please_ go yell at him instead. You’ve got my fucking blessing for that.” Joe looks pretty miserable. Patrick feels bad about whatever part he played in that, really he does, but honestly right now he’s pissed at Joe too. He’ll be fair tomorrow. Today his fucking heart hurts.

So all he says is, “I will be twice as dickish to Pete. Promise,” and shimmies out of Joe’s guitar. He places it in the hands of his friend and goes out into the night, trusting the compass of his tangled-up heart to guide him home.

*

Pete can’t find Patrick anywhere. It is the experience of loss compounded: first things go dark in his head and heart, now the physical, external Patrick is missing too. Pete is shaky, queasy, with a gnawing ache in his lungs that pretty much rules out breathing.

It feels like the opposite of hope.

It feels like he’s been away from Patrick for a century, at least one century, like the separation sickness has turned to a permanent affliction now that the bond is gone. This confuses Pete: how long will the withdrawal last? Does he need to detox, sweat Patrick out of his system? Or will the rest of his life feel like this, like a 40 year hangover from a few weeks’ brush against gold?

Almost like an answer to Pete’s existential question, it is Patrick who finds him. Pete has climbed up a large, geometric sculpture installation that provides one of the novelties of this festival site. He climbed it with a vague sense of gaining higher ground, extending his line of sight. But dusk has folded up under the weight of nightfall: the sky is purple-dark, its apex scabbed with a crust of sapphire stars, the sun forgotten. The night is silvered. Pete despairs of gold.

Then Patrick crests the same horizon the sun sank into. For a dazzling moment, Pete can’t even tell the difference, this kid shines so fucking bright.

Patrick seems to know exactly where to find Pete. He makes a beeline for the great concrete statue, hoists himself onto the lowest giant skewed rectangle, and says cordially to Pete, “I invite you to suck a dick. Any dick in the world. Go ahead, pick a dick, any dick. And fucking choke on it.”

Pete’s mouth drops open. Patrick crosses his arms across his chest and stares up at Pete in challenge.

“You found a way to break the mindmeld,” Pete says. “I thought you’d be glad.” Pete’s feet dangle of the edge of his polyhedron. He has the literal high ground but he feels small, childlike, less than.

“You _kissed_ my _best friend_. Don’t change the fucking subject. I’m supposed to be _glad_   you hurt me so much my survival instincts took over and shut the link down before it actually killed me?” There’s something to Patrick’s voice, some deeper layer to what he’s saying—almost a thread of insincerity. Like there’s a joke happening somewhere and Pete doesn’t know the punchline. With the link, Pete would know effortlessly. Without it, he can’t clarify. He feels only the edge of it, a blurry cryptid. It puts him on guard, knowing just enough to be aware he doesn’t know what’s going on.

“You wanted to get rid of me,” Pete points out, hoping Patrick will tell him he’s got it wrong. “Doesn’t this make it easy?”

“Are you just going to let me blame you for all of this?” Patrick asks. The effect is like a sudden gravity outage. Pete is instantly disoriented; all the rules have changed.

Sounding exasperated, looking pink, Patrick says, “Pete, I already know _Joe_ kissed _you_. I know you turned him down. Why are you letting me yell at you like this?”

“It was—disloyal. I broke the rules. I _hurt_ you.” Even as Pete outlines the reasons Patrick should want to stay away from him, Patrick draws closer. Patrick pulls himself up onto the second block. He stands just below Pete. They are almost eye-to-eye.

This makes Pete feel even more vulnerable. He draws his knees up to his chest, wanting a barrier. Wanting to hide.

“You’re supposed to protest. This is your cue. You’re supposed to—fuck, make a grand declaration about how much I mean to you. Or don’t I mean much to you?”

There’s the edge again—like Patrick is teasing him. Only Pete doesn’t understand _why_. God, Pete misses being in Patrick’s head. He feels perfectly opposite urges to hide himself from Patrick and crawl inside his mind.

“Let me just say this is the weirdest fight I’ve ever been in,” says Pete, dodging the question with a great deal of clumsy transparency.

Patrick shakes his head, brow furrowed in frustration. It seems like he’s 100%, true-blue angry again. Pete can _not_ get his bearings. “It feels like you’re not even in it! I was so _sure_ of you. Now I don’t know where you’ve gone.”

“Are you mad at me or not? I just—I really can’t tell.” The words just burst out. Pete is ready to burst himself, from the stress of not knowing. Did he ever talk to Patrick, even, before their bond? Because this kid is fucking _difficult_.

“I can’t decide!” Patrick’s voice rises toward a shout at the time his scowl rises towards a smile. See, this is exactly the problem. Pete needs a fucking decoder ring. Pete’s frustration heats his chest, spreads through him warm.

Without warning, Patrick grabs Pete by the collar and kisses him roughly on the mouth.

It is a kiss like—well—can a kiss be more than you bargained for, more than you ever thought you’d be get again, and somehow disappointing all at once? Because that is this kiss. The crash, the clash, the fierce forceful tongue, the uncoordinated nick of tooth on lip, the warmth, the flooding taste of Patrick—it should be perfect.

But even with Patrick’s mouth on his, Pete can’t _feel_ him. Not really. Not _wholly_. What in his life will ever compare to the feeling of kissing Patrick while feeling Patrick being kissed by him?

Pete kisses back hard and harder, as if he can find his way back under Patrick’s skin; when the kiss breaks, he is left cold, breathless. Wanting.

Patrick stares hard into Pete’s eyes. Searching, glaring. Not quite knowing. Pete aches and breaks to be known.

“I’m mad at you,” Patrick decides, “for making me realize how I _feel_ about you.”

Pete’s heart trips over itself. “You’re standing right here,” he says, “and I miss you so much.”

“I know. It’s stupid.”

“This is all extremely fucking stupid,” Pete agrees. Patrick is still clutching his collar, pink friction-stung lips so close Pete’s getting a—a proximity high. Pete wants to slip under his skin, curl up in his rib cage, fall asleep holding his heart.

Pete’s brain catches up to what Patrick said.

“Wait. What feelings?”

This was the wrong question, because it makes Patrick turn away and move further from him, which is the opposite of flesh-burrowing. Patrick runs a hand through his hair, so visibly aggrieved Pete wants to smooth him out, lay hands on him like a crumpled piece of paper and press him back into order.

“The feeling that I don’t like you kissing Joe! The feeling that I like you kissing me! The feeling—the feeling—” He whirls around and just stares at Pete, summarizing the unsayable in the air with his hands. “The feeling that as soon as I pushed your obnoxious thoughts and fucking _damaged_ sense of rhythm out of my head—the feeling of wanting it back. Of wanting you back.”

Patrick’s anger has burned itself out, maybe, because he comes back to stand before Pete, his chin jutted out in that contumacious way of his. Pete wants to kiss every stubborn plane and angle, sand down that scowl.

“It is very tiring,” Pete says carefully, “to be only half.”

Those must be the magic words: no sooner are they spoken that all the wealth and whirl and warmth of Patrick comes crashing back.

It is a tidal wave, a forest fire, a natural disaster. For a breath, for the length of he-doesn’t-know-whose-heartbeat, for a lifetime, Pete is lost.

*

This time when they kiss, they get it right. PeteandPatrick, PatrickandPete. They are one thing, meeting. One heart beating. What a glory it is, to have one head, one heart, and two tangled mouths. Pete shudders under Patrick’s searching hands, moaning with relief that Patrick feels so deeply it’s indistinguishable from his own. Pete crawls backwards on the sculpture, drawing Patrick onto the tallest block with him, pulling Patrick to kneel over him, with his hips and thoughts and hungry lips urging Patrick to lay down upon him, the better to… melt.

It’s not Patrick’s first kiss but it might as well be. It feels like they’re inventing it with each thready breath. There has not been a finer kiss in human history.

This is what it feels like, when everything you wish for comes true.

Patrick feels Pete’s body, both under him and as if it’s his own. He kisses Pete’s neck, feels pleasure and goosebumps and the quickening pulse in his own. Patrick can’t tell if he’s the one kissing or the one being kissed or both at once. Nothing has ever been so good.

“I think I love you,” one or both of them says. The words float on the night air, buoyed up to take their place among the stars.

“I think you do,” the other says back. They kiss and kiss and kiss. They consume. They are devoured.

Neither can say what the future holds—what they will do when the tour ends, or the summer. As long as it holds kisses like this, neither is worried. In their bones, they know: a moment like this is the same as forever.

 

_end_

**Author's Note:**

> [teenagedaze](http://archiveofourown.org/users/teenagedaze), brouhaha was for you.


End file.
